What the Sergeant Saw: The Case of the Shattered Mirror
by noenigma
Summary: A closer look at Allegory of Love...
1. Shattered

Based on Lewis _Allegory of Love. It's been awhile since I've done one of these, and I thought it probably would be wise to mention right from the start that these particular stories are really nothing more than retellings of my favourite scenes with whatever other material I thought needed included to make them into a narrative. If you really want to understand the case, you need to watch the episode…I do my best to not stray from what they show on the screen (or can be logically intuited from what they show) while trying to make sense of what our heroes were thinking or experiencing. I intended when I started writing these to stick with just what the sergeant would have seen, heard, etc…I think I manage that fairly well when the sergeant in question is Lewis; with Hathaway though—I find it impossible to not occasionally throw in something from Lewis' viewpoint because…well, he is the reason I'm here._

Purely for fan purposes, no copyright infringement intended.

**Shattered**

Murder was never pretty, never easy to look at. But this one was even worse than most: a young woman viciously attacked on the river bank, volumes of blood and thousands of shards of shattered glass…and the far-too early morning call-out hadn't helped.

Neither did the gallows humour of their often less than friendly pathologist. The bad ones got even to her. Quite often, he'd noted, they caused her to spit out her words in terse and angry bursts as though it were the detectives at fault for the body lying at her feet. That was a reaction Hathaway could empathize with and understand…it was not dissimilar to his own.

But others, like this one...she was chatty enough. And to do his job the sergeant needed to hear most of what she had to say, but—parts of it he could have done without. It was a hazard of the medical field, the wickedly grotesque, macabre humour of those who day after day faced the dehumanizing world of the ill and dying and when it became too much for them, took refuge behind a façade of very poor jokes.

"A fountain of blood?" he repeated her words like an auditory echo of the vivid splotches of red liberally covering the scene.

"A fountain—a spurt," she elaborated and went on, "She'd have been dead within two minutes. The jugular vein and carotid arteries were sliced right through." For emphasis, she pointed out the various severed vessels with her fountain pen as she spoke. Completely unnecessarily.

"By a piece of the mirror?" he asked.

She glanced his way out of the corner of her eye and said, "On reflection, yes."

He shook his head and tried to dissuade her from continuing on in that vein. "It's too early for jokes."

"And too early for Inspector Lewis, it would appear," she countered.

Not quite hiding his irritation, he said, "He's on his way." And then, because as the doctor had pointed out his inspector had not yet arrived and he had no one else to address at the moment, he added, "What's that?" 'That' was a paper scrap stabbed into the ground with a pointed bit of stick and defaced with letters clearly written in blood.

"I do bodies, Sergeant," Hobson, still in not-so-fine form, answered, "but I am assuming it is her blood." He steadfastly refused to roll his eyes though the fact it was blood, and undoubtedly the dead girl's, had been what was clear. It was the scrawled letters that weren't.

"Uq...is that an 'A' on the end?"

"Uqbara?" Hobson voiced tentatively. Somehow she'd managed to hit on the very pronunciation for the unfamiliar word as Hathaway would have given it. Because…there was something…

"I've heard that word somewhere," he mused. Hobson apparently hadn't. She launched into a more detailed description of her findings before he could quite place where. And then there was the scene processing to oversee waiting for Lewis' arrival…

It was all water under the bridge before his boss finally showed.

Hathaway made the mistake of stepping out of the tent set up over the crime scene just as Lewis approached giving Hobson the opportunity she must have been waiting for.

"Loitering within tent," she told the inspector with a nod towards Hathaway.

Hathaway scowled and Lewis winced before asking the sergeant, "Where does she get them?"

"Beano? Dandy?" Hathaway guessed. Hobson gave him a disparaging look; she didn't appreciate his stabs at humour any more than he did hers.

Lewis shot his guess down with, "You don't read comics."

"I used to look over the rough boys' shoulders, Sir," he said, but Lewis moved past him to enter the tent and it was time to get to work.

Lewis listened to his report while surveying the bits and pieces SOCO had collected, tagged, and bagged. It was the absence of a phone that drew his attention.

"She'd have had a phone," he stated. A young woman, in this day and age, hard to imagine she wouldn't have, Hathaway had to concede though it occurred to him that when Lewis had been her age, or even Hathaway's own, the absence of a phone would have been a given.

And then there was the perfume, with its expensive name and expensive scent which carried with it memories of the inspector's dead wife.

"Our Lyn bought some for Val that Christmas before we…lost her," Lewis said in explanation and turned away to stare out over the river. They'd come that far since that first day Hathaway had stood shuffling awkwardly while Lewis squatted at the side of his wife's grave. Lewis could now speak her name and the horrible truth that she was gone…just about. Those last words had been spoken so quietly that it was possible Hathaway had only intuited them. Still, Lewis had choked them out, and that was progress of a sort.

Hathaway stepped back to thumb through paperwork he'd already reviewed and give Lewis the time he needed to swallow down his tears and his grief, but there was a splash behind him, and he turned to see one of the divers making his way to shore with the ornate mirror frame held triumphantly over his head much as the man who had recovered the Wolvercote Tongue from the Thames years before must have done.*

The sight of the frame made Hobson pause and sigh before explaining how she saw the murder being accomplished, "So, smash it down over her head and pull back unrelenting and side to side—the jagged glass saws through her neck. She resists and cuts her hand trying to save herself." It was a sad summary of a horrific end. There was nothing more for the pathologist to add but, "Postmortem result as soon as I can." Then she was off leaving the detectives to get on with their part of the investigation.

"Hold back on the detail of how she died for the time being," the inspector, his emotions firmly back in check, ordered Hathaway though it was unlikely the details of a case like this would stay under the radar long. It was far too gruesome for that. "And that… 'Uqbara' word or whatever it is."

At that, finally, the tidbit of information that had been teasing Hathaway's consciousness since Hobson had read out the bloody word on that scrap of paper fell satisfyingly into place. "I've remembered," he announced.

"What?"

"Uqbara…though usually it's transliterated with 'K' not a 'Q'," he began.

Lewis rolled his eyes and said, "You could talk the head off a penny, you, eh?"

The sergeant got the hint and went on more succinctly, "It's a place in Iraq."

"Case solved then," Lewis quipped. "Thanks very much… Iraq." Iraq sounded much more like a complication than a help. And, of course, it was because Uqbara had less than nothing to do with the case at all. Unfortunately, they'd waste precious time and endanger more lives before the bloody scrawled letters would spell out their correct message and bring the case to a close.

"Mirror as a murder weapon...what's that all about?" Lewis asked as they walked on, and the answer to that, when it finally fell into place, would be almost too horrific to contemplate.

*I missed the connection watching this until I began to write it up, but then the reenacted scene was unmistakable and deserving of a nod. Inspector Morse: _The Wolvercote Tongue_


	2. Distortions

In police investigations, there is almost always a coveted job and one that is rather less so. Unfortunately, it is not always possible to know which is which; in their investigation of Marina Hartner's flat, Hathaway was pleased to discover he'd drawn the long straw.

"Complete waste of time," the inspector grumbled in disgust after he'd questioned the neighbours and joined Hathaway in the small, tidy flat. "The neighbour reckons Marina is either Polish _or _Venezuelan...and can we have a word with the council about her recycling bin?"

Hathaway had just laid his hands upon something that made his part of the job most worthwhile. He held the murdered girl's passport over his shoulder for the inspector to see and said, "Czech Republic."

"You might have given me a shout," Lews said sounding disgruntled. Hathaway was unperturbed. Having just found the passport, he could hardly have been expected to use it to rescue the inspector from his interview with a chatty and spectacularly unhelpful neighbour—even if that would have been what the sergeant would have wanted to do.

"Sorry," he said uncontritely. "What seems to be the problem with the recycling bins?" He didn't let Lewis' aggrieved sigh or dirty look spoil the moment but went on, "Seems that she moved to England two years ago, and there are pay slips in her name from somewhere called The Grapevine?"

"Oh, that's that pub over by the Sheldonian," Lewis said without having to pause and give it any thought. Not surprising that. After all of his years in Oxford, Lewis knew it inside and out, and after all his years with Morse…there couldn't be a drinking establishment anywhere in the vicinity where Lewis hadn't sampled the orange juice and paid for a pint or two of their finest. "Anything else?" Lewis asked hopefully. "Letters? Diary?"

"No, not yet. There might be something in the laptop. And there's this," he said reaching out for the book he'd found earlier, "Dorian Crane's first book, _Halfwoods_. Did you meet him last night?"

"Yeah," Lewis said sounding singularly unimpressed. "He signed his new one for our Lyn as it happens."

"Might be worth something one day," Hathaway said. All too prophetic words for the book which was almost certainly destined to hit the top of the charts before its author's sensational death headed straight to a cult classic after it. Lewis' Lyn could have flogged her signed birthday copy for thousands of pounds. But the book's future worth held no interest to Lewis for he'd just spotted the bottle of perfume sitting on the closet shelf next to its wrappings and signed card. They would never be worth flogging, but it was their first real lead in the investigation.

"_All love, Ned_," Lewis read. "Ned?"

"Short for Edward," Hathaway supplied, and it wasn't the unfortunate shape of his face that gave him a smug look when Lewis growled at him in response. And the day just kept getting better and better from there.

There was the lovely Kelly at the Grapevine who seemed to enjoy tweaking Lewis as much as Hathaway.

"You're not Immigration?" she asked.

"Certainly not, Kelly," Hathaway assured her. "Better suits."

She smiled as she ran an appraising eye over the pair of them and pronounced, "Yours, maybe." Hathaway allowed himself a smile of his own when Lewis couldn't help looking down at his suit which was, of course, perfectly acceptable. Still, she'd been helpful enough, supplying them with what information she could willingly enough. Marina had been edgy whenever her work status had come up, had generated a lot of attention from the male customers of the pub without seeming to favour anyone in particular, she'd left work around nine the evening before without saying where she was going or who she might see wherever that was, she'd never mentioned an Edward or a Ned, and the only number she'd supplied had been for the payphone at her place. By the time they were ready to thank her for her help and get on with their work, Professor Jassim had called to report a missing mirror.

The professor had no way of knowing that having his stolen property complaint sent to a senior CID officer of Lewis' rank and experience (by Morse's rating system, definitely a three-folder man*) and having that officer immediately show up at his door was highly unusual. He invited the pair into his college rooms without any foreboding qualms.

"I know you from somewhere," Lewis said. (He had by then forgiven Hathaway his 'your suit's perfectly serviceable, Sir…a new tie, maybe' jibe the sergeant hadn't been able to resist giving him on the way to the college. At least the sergeant thought he had…but maybe he really had better plan to buy the man a new tie—a very nice, new tie—this coming Christmas.)

The professor nodded and said, "The Randolph last night. You apologized to me when I bumped into you…a very English courtesy."

"Oh. Yes," Lewis fumbled out with an embarrassed laugh.

Hathaway took pity on him and moved the conversation on, "You reported the theft of a mirror, Sir?"

"Yes. When I arrived this morning, it was gone," the professor said pointing where the distinctive, unfaded impression the missing mirror had left on the sun-bleached wall made Jassim's identification of their murder weapon more than redundant. Still, the sergeant flipped through the case file to hold out the crime photo to the professor.

"Sixteenth century Persian," Jassim said, taking the picture and sitting on the edge of his desk. "Is that blood?"

They quickly ascertained that any number of students and staff might have entered Jassim's always unlocked door (_I never lock it. It's not fitting...or so I believed...to the ethos of this college_) and seen the mirror hanging prominently on the wall, and just as many could have taken it, laid in wait for Marina Hartner, and used it to kill her on the riverbank.

As far as the inspector was concerned, that and the information that Uqbara had been a very important medieval city just outside of Baghdad in Jassim's native Iraq was all they were to learn of interest from Professor Jassim, though Hathaway enjoyed a few minutes recalling his student days under 'dear old' Lizzy Tronswick with the man. Too bad, really, they couldn't have left the professor then before he felt compelled to lie when Lewis called them both back from their old home week.

"I went straight home from the Randolph to my always patient wife." It would have saved them a good deal of time and trouble if the professor would have clarified that his 'straight' involved detouring around their murder victim. But that, too, was a question the good professor chose to answer with a lie.

"Do you know a Marina Hartner?" Lewis asked, and Jassim answered him with an emphatic shake of his head and a decisive 'no'. Sadly, neither of the detectives saw through his lies to call him on them.

As they left, Hathaway noted, "It's quite a coincidence, that. His mirror and an Iraqi place name at the murder scene..."

"Someone trying to incriminate him?" Lewis ventured.

"Or that's what he wants us to think."

Lewis let that go to ask, "Titus Bruckhardt...what sort of a name's that?"

Hathaway chose not to believe that Lewis' question was a gentle reprimand for sending their interview far off-topic. "He was a perennialist."

If the inspector had meant it as a rebuke, he was willing to not push it any further for he joked, "What do they believe in, low-maintenance gardening?"

"Hardly," Hathaway took off, "they propose that everlasting divine wisdom goes back to man's beginnings before religion. Burckhardt was especially interested in its relationship to Islam. I've got a book, actually, I could lend you."

"I'll pass, thanks," Lewis told him, and Hathaway realized he'd been going on a bit again. At this rate, Lewis was probably wondering if all the pennies in his pocket would be headless by the end of their investigation. Still, what had started off as a rather bad day had turned into quite an enjoyable one and it wasn't over yet. For there was the woman they ran into in the quad. Ginny.

"Just someone I met," Lewis explained trying to divert Hathaway's interest after she'd gone on her way, but Hathaway had seen the way they'd laughed and talked together and was sure there was something there he could use to get after his boss. Too bad he'd gotten a call as soon as they'd met up so he hadn't been privy to just what it was they'd laughed and talked about…still he wasn't a detective for nothing.

Just as well he had the enjoyment out of Lewis' meeting with Ginny for the case intruded on his day from there.

"No joy on the next of kin for Marina," he reported to Lewis.

"I want her positively identified before we release her name," Lewis said.

"Kelly from the Grapevine?" Hathaway offered.

Apparently, Lewis hadn't held the suit comment against the girl for he opted to give her a break. He decided they should call the doctor named on Marina's medical card instead. And if there were coincidences to be talked about concerning the case, they would come to discover that Lewis giving the formal identification duty to Dr. Jem Wishart was certainly one.

*Inspector Morse _Last Seen Wearing_


	3. After-Images

The sergeant was a bit surprised at Wishart's reaction to seeing the girl's dead body. As a medical doctor, the man had to have seen his fair share.

"Not in that state," the doctor explained, his face white and his hands shaking as he fumbled about filling his cup of water from the dispenser in the hospital hallway outside the mortuary. Shaken as he was, the doctor was able to confirm that their murder victim was Marina Hartner. Perhaps, if Wishart hadn't been so distressed, Hathaway would have read the lies the doctor fed him for what they were. Or perhaps, the sergeant was still just too inexperienced to recognize the signs for what they were. Either way, he let Wishart go believing that the doctor knew next to nothing of the girl when in fact…well, it would all come out in the end.

Dr. Hobson had caught Hathaway before he'd left. Without preamble she gave him a quick rundown on the PM.

"Postmortem interval of two to six hours...ish. What time did they find her?" she asked.

"Dawn...ish," Hathaway answered. If he'd had any other governor than Lewis, he wouldn't have dared such an answer. Hobson's tongue could be more cutting than her scalpel, and she wasn't averse to using it. But the good doctor was sweet on his boss and by association that allowed Hathaway to get away with a lot more than the average sergeant braving her domain. She glared at him but otherwise let his comment pass unremarked. He went on, "Say, 4:45, gives us a death between 10:45 and 2:45 this morning."

Along with the dead girl's jewelry, a couple of rings and what Hobson called a locket, the doctor also gave him the news that Marina Hartner had not spent her last evening alone. Neither Hobson nor Hathaway had the slightest inkling that they'd just met the man who'd shared Marina's last evening with her.

The sergeant headed back to the station to begin a computer search on Marina and not only found her but also managed to dig up Ned. He interrupted Lewis' report to the chief super with his news, "Sir, I've found Ned."

"Where is he?"

"On her laptop." And he was. Ned from Oxford, England bearing testimony to the beauty and charm of their murder victim. Which didn't exactly give them an address but at least it was something. And soon thereafter Uniform called in a report that someone was in Marina's room which sent the sergeant chasing after that someone. Leyla Adan, a shy, quiet-voiced Moslem girl, who'd let Marina use her room in the Randolph to meet a man though she didn't think it was proper and she didn't know who the man was. Another lead that seemed to lead nowhere then.

But the girl did have Marina's cell phone number…turned off, of course. More work for the sergeant there, putting through the requests for her phone records. Hathaway listened with half an ear to Lewis radio appeal for information while he filled out the proper forms. As usual on hearing Lewis' media appeals, Hathaway, for reasons he'd never quite understood, was reminded of the old Tesco commercials…a little tidbit he'd decided from the very beginning best kept to himself. He did not think the inspector would be pleased to learn he reminded his sergeant of a talking trolley.

The phone records came through soon enough and there, like on Marina's laptop, was Ned. Norman E. Deering, his name appearing again and again, month after month as having called and been called by Marina Hartner. On their way to Professor Deering's college rooms, the detectives ran into him outside of one of the shops. Lewis recognized him both as the man they were after and as one more he'd seen at that book launch.

"Ned?" Hathaway called after him.

Deering turned and gave them a once over before saying, "Only to my friends." By the look on his face when the officers showed him their warrant cards, they wouldn't be calling him Ned.

Deering was an odd fish, and purposely so. One of Oxford's own, pathetically trying to stand out from all the other academics in town; doubtlessly feeling he was that much above his fellows, but only proving he wasn't. Getting anything useful out of the man while managing not to encourage his affected manner was just part of the job for both Lewis and Hathaway who dealt with Deering's type far more often than either would have preferred.

Deering had brought Marina to Oxford and got her set up in the trade, but she'd dropped him the April before. Interestingly enough, his alibi ended up being Dr. Jem Wishart who it turned out had not only been Marina's GP but was also Deering's brother-in-law and the father of Darian Crane's fiancé. It seemed like everyone remotely involved in the case had been at that book launch except for Marina's shy friend from the Randolph and Marina herself. And Marina, at least, had been at the Randolph even if she'd managed to not attend the launch…they left Deering to his students and went back to the office to review the CCTV footage from the hotel.

After several minutes of it, Lewis rubbed his eyes, and Hathaway helpfully asked, "Have you thought about glasses, Sir? For close work."

Lewis cupped a hand behind his ear and said, "Sorry, can't hear you…haven't got me hearing aid in." But he was the one who spotted Marina entering the building on the grainy film. 9:13, straight from work at the Grapevine. As they fast-forwarded through trying to spot her leaving later on, they discussed possible motives for the murder other than antique mirrors and ancient Iraqi towns.

Detective Chief Superintendent Innocent joined them. "Progress?" she asked.

"Getting there," Lewis assured her though that was rather questionable. He glanced her way and then took a second look.

"Girls' night out," she explained, messing about with an earring. "With uh…Ginny and a couple of others from university days."

Hathaway kept his eyes on the screen, and Lewis said, "Very nice, Ma'am."

"Thank you," Innocent said and added in that tone of voice that both men, being 'available', knew all too well. "She's lovely, Ginny, don't you think?"

"She seems…very pleasant, yes, Ma'am," Lewis allowed. Hathaway couldn't hide his smile; but Lewis' words hid something more. Innocent wasn't the first to give it a try. Seemed a good number of his friends had at one time or another decided he needed a push in the right direction. Only he didn't. It wasn't some old school chum of Jean Innocent or anyone else for that matter he was in need of, no matter how lovely. He needed his wife. And no good-doer, no matter how determined or hopeful, was bringing her back to him.

"Separated," Innocent said. The trapped look Lewis threw his sergeant made Hathaway want to laugh, but Marina appeared on screen to save the inspector. She left the hotel at ten to eleven, stopped briefly to speak to the driver of a car that was too far off screen to show its plate number, and walked on towards her death. A young boy not far behind her.

The chief super leaned forward and squinted at the screen before saying, "Must be the Wishart boy." And that was one Wishart too many for Lewis. The chief super went off to her girls' night, and the detectives paid a visit to the good doctor and his family.

Wishart backed up Professor Deering's alibi and introduced them to his daughter Alice who mentioned that Dorian had recognized Marina's photo in the paper—he sometimes drank at the Grapevine. As for the boy, Hayden—inhabits his own little universe, his dad had said—a universe of toy soldiers, loud music, and bad manners as far as Lewis could see.

"Hayden's totally gone into himself since Mum died," Alice explained as she led them across to the outbuilding her brother had made his own.

"I'm sorry," Lewis said. A car accident a year before…Hathaway thought there was a lot more that Lewis might have said about the loss of Alice's mother, and there probably was, but he didn't. Instead, he asked, "That perfume you've got on—is that Mystique Noir?"

"Yes, I always wear it…Uncle Norman spoiling me again."

"A present from Professor Deering?"

"Yes…you're good on perfumes—for a man."

"It…reminds me of someone," Lewis said, his voice faltering at the end.

Hathaway stepped in and said, "Shall we take it from here?" He'd become almost adept at that, stepping in and filling silences, but not quite adept enough. Not when both parties were as well acquainted with grief as Lewis and Alice. A silent acknowledgement passed between them before Alice began to walk across the dark-shadowed lane. Hathaway purposely led the way to the door, but Lewis stayed looking after the girl as she went. Hathaway frowned at him, but what could he say? There'd been nothing when he'd first begun to work with Lewis and there was still nothing over two years later. Sometimes, he felt as though Mrs. Lewis' death was a living entity, a third partner who carried far too much sway but never its share of the workload.

Hayden had nothing to offer them though Lewis thought if he'd been less interested in the gruesomeness of the murder and more in helping them he might have done.

On their way out, Hathaway, having stood throughout most of the interview studying Hayden's wargame table with its miniature armies and troops, couldn't help advising, "Try advancing the Gadrillions on your left flank."

"What he needs is some fresh air," Lewis declared once they were out of earshot. "Cooped up with his toy soldiers."

"War-gaming figures," Hathaway corrected him.

"Same difference," Lewis said and his disgust was clear in his voice. It surprised Hathaway; he would have thought Lewis would have felt a good deal of compassion for the boy.

"He's had a hard time. He's lost his mum," Hathaway said.

"Don't make excuses for him. He's not doing himself any favours, is he? Backing off into some fantasy world because life's given him a kick in the face." Lewis climbed into the car and left Hathaway looking after him. Perhaps, he decided, Lewis couldn't find his usual compassion because the boy and his reaction to his mum's death were too close to Lewis and his own reaction to the loss of his wife? That first year or two…well, Hathaway hadn't been there, had he? But, he'd heard enough to gather Lewis hadn't done himself any favours in the immediate aftermath of Valerie Lewis' death. Hiding away not in a fantasy world but the bottle…

"Call it a day, Sergeant," Lewis told Hathaway.

"Quick pint, Sir?" Hathaway offered, but Lewis passed leaving his sergeant to forge on alone and make a friend of both Professor Rutherford and the pub manager.


	4. Shadowed Glimpses

Early the next morning, the sergeant learned that while he'd been solving squabbles in the pub, Lewis had been reading Dorian's book and finding a possible avenue of inquiry.

They followed that avenue from Dorian's college rooms to Professor Deering's lecture. Sneaking in the back, they found the man they were looking for leaning against the wall listening. Deering's affectations didn't seem so outlandish speaking on Lewis Carroll and his works; the students at least seemed to appreciate his teaching. Crane, too, smiled right up until Deering made a pointed jab directly his way. At that point, their man slipped through the door and was gone.

As the two detectives moved to follow him, Hathaway pointed out the sword in the case against the wall. "It's meant to be the original of Peter's sword from _The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe_," he said.

Lewis, ever the policeman, gave it a quick glance and said, "I hope they've got it insured."

They caught Dorian before he could get too far. He remembered Lewis from the book launch and even remembered signing a book for Lewis' daughter. (Of course. The sergeant was beginning to feel like he was the only person in all of Oxford who hadn't attended the launch.)

"Well remembered, sir," Lewis told him. He held up his warrant card and said, "May we have a word?' Dorian looked taken aback but quickly led them to his rooms—talking to the police in the middle of the quad not being the done thing in Oxford. His rooms were full of books, knights, swords, dragons, and even a secret box…the stuff of fantasy. And that's all the mirror in his book, the one that brought down a swift and ugly death, had been, he quickly assured them. It had been based on Professor Jassim's mirror but otherwise, purely fantastical…

"It kills by magic. It's not literal," he explained. "You obviously didn't read to the end of the chapter."

"I'm a policeman, Mr. Crane, not a fan," Lewis told him. "You knew the victim, you described the murder weapon, and we found a copy of your first novel in her room."

"What can I say? It sold very well," Dorian said and insisted he had not given her the book. He also denied ever hearing of Uqbara. "Not Uqbara, no," he answered rather enigmatically. Besides finding out that the author didn't like his things, particularly his secret box, handled any more than Hayden Wishart liked his game figures messed about with, they learned nothing else from Dorian.

On their way back to the office, Lewis said, "He was lying about Uqbara—it means something to him."

"And no alibi," Hathaway noted.

"I wonder what he's got in that box," Lewis said. Before Hathaway could throw out any guesses there was a call from the station…Dr. Wishart was there wanting to talk to them.

"It came in this morning," the doctor said, understandably upset. It was a newspaper clipping featuring a picture of Dorian and Alice; Alice's face had been slashed away. It was a disturbing development that Hathaway thought they should look into closely.

But, Lewis told Wishart, "We'll look into this," and hustled him out without bothering to get any more information.

"Sir?" Hathaway asked as soon as Lewis shut the door behind the doctor.

"We've been barking up the wrong tree. Last night at Wishart's place, I caught sight of Alice in silhouette in the dark. Marina was the same age, the same build, the same hair…" So, Hathaway had gotten that wrong—not Mrs. Lewis' ghost haunting his inspector yet again at all. "…and it was pitch black down by the river."

"So you're saying the killer got the wrong woman, Marina instead of Alice?"

"They even wore the same perfume, didn't they?" Lewis asked. And then he sent the sergeant off to see if he could learn anything more about that 'Uqbara'.

Hathaway failed to turn up anything new about Uqbara itself, but…seeing Professor Rutherford the night before in the pub had him thinking that it might be worth having an expert run an eye over that bloody scrawl…

"Thank you for seeing me, Professor," he said entering her room.

"Call me Bernie," she answered automatically before looking up to recognize him from the pub. "I would never have had you down as a detective, Mr. Hathaway."

"And I would never have had you down as a Bernie, Bernie," he replied.

She laughed and said, "I do like you," which could only work in his favour as he was there to ask her help. He was glad he hadn't just kept quiet and stayed out of her row at the pub like he easily might have done. "I'm intrigued…you want some help over a bloody word?"

"Well, I thought in view of your expertise in deciphering—" he began, but she was eager to get right down to it.

"Yes…well, let's have a look at it." He handed her the crime scene photograph, and she grabbed it up and began studying it intently.

"I'm a big fan of your work on the Dead Sea Scrolls," he said.

"Flattery will get you everywhere," she said. And in this case, it quickly got him the certainty that he and Dr. Hobson had misread that final 'A'.

"Well, if it's not an 'A' then what is it?"

"A sanguineous smudge, if you ask me," she answered. "Certainly not a letter…is there a South American dimension to your case at all, Mr. Hathaway?"

"No, not as far as I know."

"What about literature? Fantasy literature?" And that was enough to more than pay back the pint he'd bought her the night before (or would have bought her if the landlord hadn't waved away the charge).

He rushed back to the office to interrupt yet another of Lewis' briefings to the chief superintendent.

"Does Uqbar without the 'A' mean anything?" Lewis asked.

"According to my new source, Uqbar is a fictional land created by the characters in a story by J.L. Borges."

"Who's he when he's home?" Lewis asked.

The chief super beat Hathaway to the answer. "Argentinean writer. Gauchos, tangos, and the nature of reality…that takes me back. Does anyone still read Borges?"

"Well, Dorian Crane would," Hathaway said. "And, he was hesitant when we mentioned Uqbara."

"Right up Hayden Wishart's street as well," Lewis said. "See? Fantasy world. That would explain the mirror." It must have been apparent to the inspector that Innocent and Hathaway missed the connection, so he drew the dots for them. "Alice…Alice Through the Looking Glass."

"If you're right, that's sick," Innocent said with a grimace. And it was. The thought was horrific even if the Alice in question had been a Queen of Hearts character. Instead she was an endearing, thoughtful young woman and that she might have been the intended victim of such a violent act of murder…it didn't bear thinking about.

But, that was what they were paid for. To look at the horrors of the job and glimpse the festering darkness of evil masked behind their fellow men until sometimes the sergeant could almost see a murderer in his own mother's face. And sometimes, when life blindsided him and he saw red in response—sometimes, he was half-afraid of what he himself might be capable of in the right—or rather, wrong circumstances. And if after such a few years on the job, he felt his blood sometimes run cold with it all...he wondered about his inspector who'd been in the CID for more years than Hathaway could even contemplate. How did Lewis look past it all and still see good in the world? His sergeant didn't know, and he didn't know how to ask.


	5. Piercing Darkness

However the initial thought might have weighed on Lewis, he'd had time to get used to it. "Well, it's Oxford," he told Innocent as though that explained it all. And, after all his years working cases at the University…perhaps it did. "Plus," he went on, "we've got a Lewis Carroll connection slap bang in the middle of this with Professor Deering."

"Her uncle?" Innocent asked though she'd surely seen her share of familial murders along her way.

"Always look to the family first," Lewis quoted. "It was him that gave Marina and Alice that perfume…"

"Yeah, but if he knew Alice was going to be at the book launch, why would he think she'd walk along the river?" Hathaway asked.

"Why would anyone think so, come to that?" Innocent added.

Lewis said, "We'll ask her."

But it wasn't as easy as that because Alice was out and about and no one seemed to know where. She'd lost her phone at some point or another and there was nothing for it but to try to catch her that evening at the Eagle and Child for Dorian's thing with the New Inklings. Lewis sent Hathaway on with the promise he'd meet up with him later. (Which was how poor Lewis was waylaid by Innocent still not-so innocently trying to set him up with Ginny—fortunately, Innocent's old friend was no more interested in starting something than Lewis himself, and he could truthfully tell Innocent he had called and it just didn't work out.)

As things would happen, Hathaway ran into Professor Rutherford leaving the Eagle and Child just as he was arriving.

"Well, now, don't go in there, whatever you do," she warned him in passing.

"Why? Is the beer off?" he asked.

"No," she told him. "It's far worse than that. The place is full of fools who think that Tolkien and the rest of his infantile bunch are worthy of a celebration…I only went in for a quiet pint."

"So you consider Tolkien to be infantile?"

"All fantasy is infantile," she asserted, "until it turns sinister. Which it does if you don't grow out of it." Behind him two students with elven ears pushed through the pub entrance. She nodded in their direction and said, "Arrested adolescence is a dangerous thing, Mr. Hathaway. Nasty and dangerous." With that she went on her way, and he went on his which would inevitably prove her point all too well.

The sergeant was surprised to find that Dorian had not yet arrived though he was meant to be speaking and that the Sword of Truth had been brought in for the occasion.

"Sir, is this the inn where the hobbits quaffed their ale?" a man asked him.

Professor Deering saved Hathaway having to come up with an answer to that bit of infantile fantasy nonsense. "They still do when the moon is full," Deering told the man. Ginny showed up about then and Professor Jassim but not Alice. Hathaway stepped out for a quiet smoke and had barely finished when Alice finally arrived.

"Is Dorian here yet?" she asked him.

"No, but can I have a word about Tuesday night? It's important—were you always intending on going to the book launch?"

"Yes, of course."

"Anything out of the ordinary happen that evening?"

"Um…I was a bit late getting there because of the trains. But, no…"

"If you were going to go home instead of the hotel, which route would you have taken?"

"I normally walk along the river. Why?" Before he could explain, Lewis called him to come meet him at the college. "Will you wait with Ginny until I get back?" Hathaway asked Alice, and perhaps, he should have taken the time to explain why. Instead, he promised to do so later and left her there confused as to why he suddenly thought she needed a minder and not at all persuaded she did.

It seemed Melanie, the Australian student on Dorian's staircase, could also have used a minder. Someone had clocked her in Dorian's room. She had no idea why or who. She didn't bother to deny she would have happily taken Dorian off of Alice, but she did deny that she'd been the one to slash the photo of Alice. Leaving her to the paramedics, the sergeant filled Lewis in on what he'd learned from Alice about her usual route home.

"If the killer did mistake Marina for Alice, then they didn't know Alice was going to the launch," Hathaway reported.

"Or, they had reason to believe that she'd changed her plan," Lewis suggested. "Come on, Dorian isn't here, but we'd best have a look about and make sure nothing was taken."

"It doesn't look much like a burglary, does it?" Hathaway said giving the rooms a quick onceover. But then he noticed the missing box—the one Dorian had been so particular about. "Where's his box?" he asked, but there was no answer.

And when they arrived back at the pub, they found that Dorian had never shown up, Ginny and Alice were both gone, and someone had nicked the Sword of Truth. Curiouser and curiouser.

Only, there was nothing funny about it…for someone had taken the Sword of Truth and rammed it deep into Dorian Crane's chest.


	6. Translucence

"Dorian Crane died within minutes of being stabbed through the heart," Dr. Hobson reported to them early the next morning—the doctor being sweet on Lewis wasn't enough to explain that sort of flagrant queue jumping, but the victim being an up and coming rising star was. "Pushed home with a single thrust."

Hathaway noted, "Alice was covered in blood."

"Well," Hobson said looking down into her empty coffee cup as though to avoid picturing the sad scene of Alice, covered in blood, shaking beside Dorian's dead body, "it's consistent with finding him and cradling him in her arms."

"We still haven't questioned her—she had to be sedated," he said.

"Are you getting anywhere with this case?" she asked.

Lewis, who had been quiet up until then, said, "Yes, thanks, Doctor. For a start we think Alice was meant to be the first victim."

Hathaway explained, "Has to do with the mirror and her name—_Alice Through the Looking Glass_."

Hobson frowned as her pager went off and said, "And now you've got the sword from _The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe_…what next? Noddy killing Big Ears?" She walked off leaving the two policemen exchanging looks over that. Even though Hathaway had come in as a sergeant, and a detective one at that, he'd had his share of PC Plod jibes through the years, and Lewis…who a long, long time ago had actually been a PC—best the doctor was on her way out the door.

She did turn at the last minute to say, "Oh, incidentally, one of my students was looking at the postmortem photographs…that piece of jewelry she wore was a Taweez locket, apparently. It's an Islamic thing." And that took the policemen's minds clean off her snide little comment.

"She was a Muslim?" Hathaway mused.

"Well, aren't there any Muslims in the Czech Republic?"

"Not as many as I imagine there are in other countries—she was nervous of her immigration status."

"So?" Lewis asked.

"So we should keep our options open," Hathaway said. "We don't know for certain Marina wasn't the intended victim, however special the perfume was." It was dangerous ground he was on. He hadn't realized how disturbing he found the whole Alice through the looking glass thing, both the thought of it and the surety with which Lewis had latched onto it. That was nothing new, Lewis latching on to a pet theory and letting it take precedence over other options, and his sergeant was never happy with it, however often Lewis' pet theory panned out.

Lewis could have told him a few things about inspectors and pet theories if he'd had a mind too—he'd worked with Morse all those years. Morse who took up a theory as fact one moment and frequently discarded it the next…but always, in the end, hit on just the right one. Lewis liked to think on his a wee bit longer before adopting them as likely and hold onto them a tad tighter once he had, but he found it easier to pursue a case with a working theory in mind. And despite Hathaway's concerns, Lewis, like Morse, could drop his fast enough when the facts called for it—so when his sergeant said he'd like to talk to Marina's Muslim friend again, Lewis nodded.

"Fair enough. If you want," he said. Lewis had been subdued all morning, and it wasn't hard to understand why. He was off to talk to the smiling Ginny from the quad, Innocent's old school friend. Only she wouldn't be smiling today; Dorian Crane had been her son. And from there the inspector would have to try to get some idea of what had happened the evening before from poor Alice. Hathaway was more than glad to let Lewis go off without him.

The sergeant managed to arrange a meeting with Marina's friend for later in the day and then got onto the paperwork—there was always a great deal of paperwork in policing. A necessary evil of their job and one Hathaway found his boss was more than happy to leave to him whenever possible. (Though peeking into old case files from when Lewis had been a sergeant showed that Lewis had done more than his fair share of it in those days with Morse…perhaps all inspectors shunted it off on their sergeants, or perhaps it was just another one of those eccentricities Morse had passed on to Lewis.)

Lewis returned from his morning's work triumphant. He'd learned what he could from the grieving mother and fiancée, and he'd gotten his hands on Alice's phone—even before he tossed it to Hathaway and let him delve into its texts and messages, Lewis had been sure it would prove what he'd already guessed. Someone—using Dorian's name and email—had messaged Alice the night of the launch telling her to go home instead of to the launch. Anyone who knew Dorian's password could have sent that message, and a quick call to Alice at the hospital revealed Dorian hadn't changed his password in years.

And it revealed a bit more than that. "The password, Sir…82uqbar." They nodded their heads at that bit of confirmation, but Leyla Adan had arrived for her interview so they had to leave it there for the moment.

Leyla confirmed Hathaway's suspicions that Marina hadn't been from the Czech Republic but Bosnia.

"She had to pay a big price for her passport in Prague to make her legal," Leyla told them. And that might have been very useful if Marina hadn't died being mistaken for Alice, but…"She did tell me about one boy who was strange. He made photos…" And he followed Marina and he carried modeled figures. And that information would prove more than worth the time they'd taken from chasing after the Alice lead to talk to Leyla again.

For Hayden Wishart had indeed been following Marina and taking pictures, and on his computer he had a photo of the car that stopped to talk to Marina that night coming out of the Randolph—a photo showing Marina getting into that car further on and also clearly showing its number plate.

A quick check on the plate had them leaving the Wisharts quite quickly to obtain a warrant.

"I don't believe this," Lewis said as they left. "We'll be back here, you wait and see."

"I don't think we have much choice, Sir. We've got his car picking up Marina, he says he doesn't know her, and the murder weapon's hanging on his wall," Hathaway said. All quite damning evidence.

Professor Jassim came with them quietly enough and came clean enough upon questioning. He had known Marina—the real Marina, and they'd occasionally met up to discuss their religion.

"Did you disapprove of the way she was living?" Lewis asked him.

"Yes," he said without hesitation but added, "but I'm hardly the Taliban."

"What did you think of Dorian Crane?" Hathaway asked.

"We got on. I enjoyed his company. His academic work was derivative, though. Much like his literary efforts. Even the title, _Boxlands_ is a nod to your namesake, Inspector. C.S. Lewis wrote a story at the age of eight called _Boxen._" Hathaway recalled reading the story as a young boy himself, and he and Jassim discussed the story and its imaginary world for a moment before Lewis broke in to ask if Marina had said why she was at the Randolph.

Jassim's answer—a doctor—could have been taken two different ways and either one had them heading back out to the Wisharts, just as Lewis had said they'd be. Jem Wishart, Marina's GP, and his brother-in-law, Dr. Deering the academic, were there having brought a still pale and shaky Alice home from the hospital.

Lewis tried to finish his chapter of _Boxlands_ as they drove out, but Hathaway was in a bit of a hurry and the road was a mite bumpy.

"Are you sure you've passed your Advanced Driver's test?" the inspector grumbled, and Hathaway wasn't so into the chase that he couldn't be bothered about hitting the next bump square on—there'd been little enough to liven up his day up to that point and, besides, it was Lewis' car.

Though Lewis had no patience with her brother, he was overly gentle with Alice.

"You might like to leave the room for a while," he offered. "What I've got to say might be a bit upsetting." Alice didn't choose to take him up on his offer though in short order she might have wished she had. Lewis' patience definitely didn't extend to her father or uncle both still trying to fabricate their bogus, joint alibi.

"If you can't remember the patient's name, we can easily call your practice," Lewis told Wishart as the man tried to come up with a name for the patient he'd supposedly visited that evening.

From the doorway, Hayden spoke up, "Just tell them—or I will."

"What is it?" Alice asked looking from her father to her uncle.

Deering broke first. "The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things," he quoted. And the truth quickly came out. There'd been no late-night brandy drinking in the professor's room. Nor a call-out to a patient.

"So which of you was with Marina on the night she was killed?" Lewis asked.

Jem Wishart sat down defeated and said, "Me." Horrified, Alice stood up from beside him. "It was long after Mum died," he quickly assured her. "I was lonely."

"But you had us, Dad!" she exclaimed. Hathaway and Lewis both looked away from her stricken face. Another day or two to come out of her shock and the poor girl would understand the presence of family didn't ease the pain of losing a wife or fiancée. Wishart couldn't answer her. She turned to her brother and asked, "And you knew?"

"He brought her here once. I saw them…in Mum and Dad's room…"

Lewis asked him quietly, "And that's why you turned Marina into a fantasy? To make her just little." The boy nodded and suddenly didn't seem suspicious at all.

It was Deering's turn to admit what he had really been up to—visiting a prostitute. "I can give you her name."

"I think you better," Lewis said. He'd had enough. "Go on, then, Sergeant."

Hathaway stepped forward and said, "I'll be inviting you both to provide a DNA sample. On a voluntary basis only, until and if one or another of you is arrested on suspicion of the murder of Marina Hartner. In the meantime, I'm arresting you both for obstructing police inquiries."

"Surely, you don't think either of them could be a killer?" Alice asked the inspector after watching Uniform take the two men off.

"I think Sergeant Hathaway might," Lewis told her.

"What about Marina and Dorian—is there a connection between their murders?"

"I think the connection is you, Alice."

"Me?"

"Can you think of anyone who hated Dorian? Really hated him for any reason?"

She shrugged. "People found him difficult to get close to sometimes, but…he was what he was." She gave a small cry and said, "I ask to be no other man than I am…that's the last thing he said to me." She left them crying then and Lewis let her go.

"That's from _Boxlands,_" he told Hathaway. "The hero says it at the end of that chapter. And I saw it in his room, too…'I'm a child of…_something_…and I won't…'"

"_I am a child of fortune and I shall not be shamed_," Hathaway offered. "_I ask to be no other man than I am._' He nicked that from Sophocles…Oedipus Rex."

"Oedipus? The one who married his…mother. Ah, no!" the inspector said and was running for the car leaving his sergeant standing there. "Get onto the Chief Super—I want to know exactly when she'd have been reading that J.L. Borges bloke—was it at university?" And for all Lewis had complained about Hathaway's driving on their way out, he certainly tore up the road on the way back. Hathaway hung on tightly and tried to keep hold of his mobile as Lewis raced along. With some difficulty, he managed to make the call to Innocent and find out that yes, university had indeed been when she'd read Borges.

"Tell her she might want to meet us at Ginny's," Lewis instructed his sergeant, and Hathaway passed it along.

"What's going on Hathaway?" the chief superintendent demanded, but Hathaway had gotten lost somewhere along the way and couldn't begin to tell her.


	7. Crystal Clear

There was no answer at Ginny's door but the detectives ran around the back and found her in the garden…burying Dorian's secret box, crying, looking very much the picture of a distraught woman. When she saw them, she grabbed the shovel and brandished it in front of her as though it were as much a shield as a weapon.

"We rang your door, Ginny," Lewis told her calmly like facing a mad woman with a shovel was not at all out of the ordinary. Lewis was able to convey a wealth of emotion in his voice when he wanted, as his sergeant well knew. But when it came to talking to people who were on the verge of madness like Hugh Mallory in that window or Ginny…It was a gift that, Hathaway thought.

(And perhaps it was. Or perhaps it was hard won having come from choosing to face death straight-on and refusing to look away. For Lewis had once brandished a shovel in much the same way as Ginny was though he'd had no hope at all that it would save him from the shotgun blast headed his way. And like he'd given Alice the choice to not stay and hear the worst of her father and uncle, Mrs. Michaels had given Lewis the choice to turn away and not see his death coming. But, he'd shaken his head and locked his eyes onto hers and stood his ground…and when Morse had arrived, when he'd walked straight into firing range and drawn Mrs. Michaels' attention, Lewis had found the courage to tell him what needed said—she's fired one barrel, Sir!—though it brought the gun straight back his way. And when Morse had redrawn her attention and said those terrifying words—Do it. Do it. Do it!—Lewis, for all his heart had been beating so wildly it was a wonder he heard the chief inspector's order, did it. And the shot had gone off so loud and so close to him that for one very long moment, Lewis hadn't known whether it had struck him or not.* Living through that might well have earned him that calm, quiet voice when all around him everything was falling apart.)

Through her tears, Ginny choked out, "I'm burying Dorian's childhood."

"May we pay our respects?" Lewis asked. He nodded to Hathaway, and the sergeant stepped to the box and said, "This is _Boxlands_, isn't it?" His own voice was full of accusation. He hadn't gotten the full story yet from Lewis, but that look on Lewis' face when the mention of Oedipus had sunk in and the wild ride to get there had told him he wasn't going to like the story when he finally did hear it all. He opened the box and revealed several loose papers, hand-drawn maps, and toy figures. "A whole world," he said reaching into the box.

Ginny stepped towards him menacingly. "I have a right to it!" she yelled.

Innocent announced her arrival with a questioning, "Ginny?" Her old friend stared at her with wild eyes. "Put it down," Innocent said.

"Why?"

"You're my friend," Innocent reminded her. "You remember university? You loved the stories of Borges…Uqbar?"

"Yes," Ginny said. "Imaginary land…I introduced Dorian to that wonderful story."

"And to _Boxen_, C.S, Lewis' imaginary land?" Hathaway asked.

"Yeah," Ginny said.

"Tell us about it," Lewis prompted.

"No one will take that world away from you," Innocent promised. "No one ever could."

"Alice wasn't Dorian's muse, was she? Whatever his publicity said…you were," Lewis said.

"I was more than that!" Ginny told him. "Did you finish the chapter?"

"Oh, yes," Lewis said. There was something final in that statement that made Hathaway look away from Ginny and at his inspector. There was something there that Hathaway had missed, something between Lewis and Ginny he'd not been privy to. While he'd been back in the office doing the paperwork, Lewis had been learning something. Something that added up to their mad rush here and that 'oh, yes' with all of its finality.

"I wasn't sure you'd realize what it meant," Ginny said. "Are you horrified?"

"I think it's fair to say that," Lewis answered though his voice didn't betray it. "If it means you had a sexual relationship with your foster son…does it?" Hathaway heard Innocent's shocked gasp even as he drew in his own. Lewis stepped toward Ginny and asked, "Did it start when your husband left?"

Ginny let the shovel fall to the ground. "He betrayed us," she said. "We comforted one another." She went on to tell the whole sad story. "We made a break of it when he came to Oxford…But, then the first book came out—I recognized our creation."

"He dedicated that one to you, but he dedicated _Boxlands_ to Alice," Lewis said, squatting beside where she'd knelt next to Dorian's box.

"Muse and bride…bride, fine—I would have worn a nice hat and been delirious for them," she said, but the hard, angry look in her eyes gave the lie to that. "But, muse?"

"That wasn't Alice's fault."

An ugly hardness transformed Ginny as she said, "Innocent people suffer all the time!" But, her voice softened into tears as she added, "Like that poor girl I killed by mistake—I thought it was Alice in the dark." She went on then to explain why she'd gone on to kill Dorian. "I knew once they were away from here, once I had lost him forever, that he would tell her the biggest secret of all—us! Oh, Jean!" she said to Innocent, "I let my heart rule my head!" But, if that was the case her heart had been beyond wicked and only concerned with keeping that secret for it hadn't been love that had moved her to kill Dorian. "I pushed the Sword of Truth home into his heart…my…my…my…" she struggled for a word to sum up all Dorian had been to her, but even for her the words were too unthinkable to utter.

There was nothing left but to take her into custody and bring the whole ugly case to a close. As they stood there watching the chief superintendent make her disheartened way to her car, Lewis looked at his sergeant and said, "You're dying to tell me something, aren't you?"

Hathaway was, but he wasn't sure he should. It was inappropriate, surely, in the circumstances—or worse. Maybe he was more like Dr. Hobson than not. Because, two people were dead, lives left in ruins, the chief super heartbroken over her old friend, and he'd rather say what had come into his mind than give the whole thing the dignified ending it deserved…Lewis waited patiently for it and the sergeant decided, why not? "That quote about the heart and the head? Lewis, C.S."

Lewis nodded. "It would be."

"Do you know what one of the Inklings is meant to have said when Tolkien started reading them _The Lord of the Rings?"_

Lewis made a face and rubbed his head as though the whole thing gave him a headache. "Oh, spare me, Sergeant. I've had enough of imaginary worlds."

"You'll like it, Sir. I promise."

"Go on, then."

"They said, 'Not more flipping elves!' Only they didn't say flipping."

Lewis chuckled. "I like it," he agreed. They walked to the car and climbed in. "Home, James," Lewis said, and his sergeant decided to let that ride.

*_The Way Through the Woods_ Inspector Morse

Author's Disclaimer: Valuing my life and having raised a houseful of children (several of whom rightly consider Brandon Sanderson a master and have read the _entire_ _Wheel of Time_ series _multiple_ times) on _Star Wars_ and all things Hobbit, it must be noted that the author does not endorse any of the views expressed herein on fantasy literature in general or Tolkien in particular.


End file.
